In general, there are T.V. programs in which the viewers want to record the broadcast information for future reference. For example, in a "How-To-Cook" program the housewives want to record the cooking information on the T.V. screens. However, under the present system of television receivers they have to write it down in their notebooks while watching the T.V. screen. This is very troublesome, and is actually difficult because they must catch up with the constant flow of the images on the screen, which proceed without considering the viewers' convenience. Recently, videotape recorders have developed, and it is true that they have solved this problem to a great extent. However, in reproducing the videotape it is neccesary to search and select that part of the tape in which the information wanted by the viewer is recorded. As generally known, the re-playing of selected parts of the tape is time- and labor-consuming, so that the housewives are often discouraged from reproducing the videotape in spite of the toil paid by them in recording.
In order to solve the inconvenience mentioned above, the inventor has made an invention which provides a printer for automatically hard-copying the pictures on the T.V. screen by writing the gradation density signals of the T.V. pictures in a RAM at real time, and reading them out.
In color television systems there are NTSC systems, PAL system, and SECAM system, all of which differ in the form of transmission of T.V. signals from each other. For example, with respect to the number of scanning lines in one frame, the NTSC system has 525 lines, and the PAL system has 625 lines, showing a large difference in the information capacity. Because of these differences in the form of transmission of T.V. signals a printer for printing out T.V. signals must be adapted to one particular system, and if it is so adapted, it is not applicable to another system. This is due to the fact that the writing address counter for writing T.V. signals in the video memory of the printer is previously set to a value proper to the system (for example, the NTSC system).